Abstract
The subthalamic nucleus (STN) is a critical hub for inhibitory control, implicated in decision making under conflict and impulsivity. Delta frequency oscillations have also been associated with inhibitory control processes, yet the relationship between human STN neuronal activity and local delta frequencies during response inhibition remains unresolved. Here we recorded STN neurons and local field potentials in patients with Parkinson’s disease performing a stop-signal reaction time task during deep brain stimulation surgery. Approximately half of STN neurons responded to a diverse set of behaviorally relevant events including go and stop signals, with stronger go-related firing and enhanced delta phase coupling linked to failed inhibition. Notably, a specific population of bursting STN neurons showed increased delta coupling. These findings suggest that STN neurons integrate go and stop information, and that enhanced delta engagement and bursting may impair inhibitory control, providing insights into the neuronal mechanism of action cancellation.
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Data availability
Deidentified electrophysiological and behavioral data generated in this study have been deposited at https://figshare.com/articles/dataset/human-STN-delta_data/31359616 (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.31359616.v2)110. Source data are provided with this paper.
Code availability
Unique code developed to analyze these data is available at https://github.com/hangyabalazs/human-STN-delta and https://zenodo.org/records/18679923 (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18679923)111.
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Acknowledgements
We thank prof. Dániel Bereczki for his support of the project. This work was supported by the Hungarian Brain Research Program NAP3.0 (NAP2022-I-1/2022) of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the ERC POC grant 101123104 to B.H.
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B.H. designed and supervised the research and acquired funding; P.H., T.L., J.P.S. and B.H. performed experiments with help from G.P., V.B., G.T. and D.F; L.Er., L.H. and L.En. implanted electrodes; L.H. and G.M. reconstructed electrode trajectories; T.L. and I.U. designed research tools; G.T. recruited study participant; J.P.S., B.K. and B.H. analyzed the data; J.P.S. and B.H. discussed the results and wrote the paper; all authors reviewed and revised the final manuscript.
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The authors declare the following competing interests: B.H. and T.L. are listed as a co-inventors on the approved Hungarian utility model U2200127, pending Hungarian patent application P2200356 and pending PCT PCT/HU2023/050054 seeking to protect the custom-designed button box used in this study. The other authors declare no competing interests.
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Szabó, J.P., Hegedüs, P., Laszlovszky, T. et al. Neurons of the human subthalamic nucleus engage with local delta frequency processes during action cancellation. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-71502-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-71502-z
